I attended the first day of a two-day conference dedicated to green building whether it be a retrofit, new building, or citywide plan. It was one of the most eye opening conferences I have attended to date on green and/or sustainable buildings. The information I learned from vendors who install green roofs at a fraction of the time and cost it once took was worth the price of admission alone. The keynote given tonight by Richard Graves, who is on the national board of Directors, for the United States Green Building Council, also enlightening those in attendance on how third world nations can now have world-class buildings with the advanced technologies in place to make fuel using anaerobic digesters that can produce biofuel that can be burned to produce energy almost anyplace in the world.
Perhaps one of the most interesting concepts to come out of the conference was that of natural capitalism, from the book of the same name authored by Hawkin, Lovins, and Lovins, which I intend to read right away. The concept is simply defined by Investor Words, " as a school of capitalist thought that seeks to reward efficiencies and remove artificial market alterations, such as professional standards and regulations...the word "natural" refers to the idea that removing regulations creates a natural state in which the markets can perform efficiently," or "an "economic theory or practice which assigns a financial cost to the use, maintenance, abuse, or depletion of natural resources and ecosystems," as defined by the Double-Tongued Dictionary which specializes (it says), in being a lexicon of fringe English, jargon, and new words.
All in all it was an awareness expanding day and am looking to share more of the particulars of things learned in future posts. My students will also be smarter in my future presentations on green buildings, too!
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